Definition
A Latin phrase from medieval constitutional law, translating literally as "nor upon them by force or by arms." The phrase does not stand alone as an independent legal term; it is a clause within the broader guarantee found in Magna Carta, specifically the passage that provides that no free man shall be seized, imprisoned, dispossessed, outlawed, exiled, or destroyed, "nor will we go upon him, nor send upon him, except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land" — to which this clause attaches as a reinforcing prohibition against royal coercion by physical force or armed power.
Read in full context, the clause prohibits the Crown from proceeding against a subject through violence or armed force outside the processes of law. It pairs with the companion clause *nec super eum ibimus nec super eum mittemus* (nor will we go upon him, nor send upon him) to form a complete bar on extrajudicial royal action against a free subject's person or property.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encounter this phrase almost exclusively in two contexts: transcriptions and translations of Magna Carta and its confirmations, and historical constitutional commentary tracing the origins of due process and the rule of law. Because the phrase appears as a subordinate clause within a longer Latin provision, it is rarely indexed independently in legal dictionaries or digests. Researchers searching for it must often work backward from the parent provision — the *nulla* or *nullus liber homo* clause — rather than looking for this phrase by name.
The phrase matters for tracing the conceptual ancestry of due process guarantees. Early English constitutional historians used clauses like this one to argue that Magna Carta imposed procedural and substantive limits on royal power, limits that were later transplanted into colonial charters and eventually into American constitutional doctrine. Researchers connecting Magna Carta scholarship to Fourteenth Amendment due process history will encounter this phrase in that genealogy.
A trap in historical sources: Latin transcriptions of Magna Carta varied across different confirmations and reissues (1215, 1216, 1217, 1225, and subsequent confirmations). The precise wording of clauses, including this one, shifted between versions. A source quoting this phrase may be working from a different recension than another source, producing apparent textual inconsistencies that are actually differences between versions of the document.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary does not provide a standalone entry for this exact phrase. The phrase appears in Burrill in connection with the companion clause *ibimus nec super eum mittemus* and the broader Magna Carta guarantee. Burrill's treatment reflects the standard approach of nineteenth-century legal lexicographers: these Latin clauses were glossed together as components of the foundational liberty provision, rather than parsed individually.
Older legal dictionaries generally — including Cowell, Jacob, and Tomlin — handle Magna Carta Latin in this aggregated fashion, and none elevate this particular clause to a freestanding entry. The absence of standalone treatment in historical dictionaries reflects the clause's function as part of a unified guarantee rather than as an operative term of art with independent doctrinal content.
What historical dictionaries miss: the comparative constitutional dimension. Nineteenth-century English and American dictionaries situate these phrases within English constitutional history but do not systematically connect them to parallel due process language in colonial instruments, state constitutions, or the Fifth Amendment. Researchers doing that comparative work must look beyond the dictionary literature to treatises on constitutional history.
Jurisdictional Note
The phrase originates in English law and has no direct statutory force in any modern jurisdiction. Its legal significance in American research is historical and genealogical — as an ancestor of due process doctrine — rather than operative. English constitutional scholarship remains the primary jurisdiction for substantive treatment of the clause.